Tag: magic

The Deal

~ Richard Schulte ~ 2 Comments

Sophie reached down to pluck a flower.

A bee landed on the back of her hand. It moved awkwardly over a knuckle and onto a finger.

Sophie froze. “A bee!” she screamed.

The bee walked slowly to the end of the finger.

“Go away!” Sophie screamed.

“Why?” asked the bee.

“Because you’re a bee! You’re dangerous and you might sting me!”

“I promise I won’t sting you if you accept my offer,” said the bee.

“What do you want?”

“If you do not pluck that flower, I will make this finger magic.”

“Deal!” said Sophie.

The bee turned around several times on the fingertip. “Now if you touch that flower very gently,” the bee explained, “you will give it a second life.”

The pollinating bee vibrated its delicate wings and departed.

Sophie looked closely at the end of her finger.

The Shining World

~ Richard Schulte ~ 1 Comment

Ceci was determined to jump into that other world–the shining world that opened at her feet.

Through the silver portal she saw a strange city of bright crystal buildings, rising down into depths of blue sky and white clouds.

She jumped.

“Hey, stop it!” her big brother complained. “You splashed me!”

The rain shower had let up. Her brother carried a black umbrella and held her hand. The sun was coming out.

Ceci twisted free.

Another silver portal opened in the sidewalk a few steps ahead and her brother circled around it. Ceci stopped and stared down.

Through the portal bright tall buildings rippled in sunlight. They seemed fairy towers that stretched just beyond arm’s reach, those shimmering visions in storybooks. They were shining beacons that summoned a troubled heart from a dark place.

Splash!

“Stop it! Why do you keep doing that?”

“I don’t know,” Ceci replied. But she did know. The world she saw through the portal was where she wanted to be.

It was a world as limitless as the bright sun’s light in wide open eyes.

Where cities were made of sapphire and topaz and amethyst and emerald. A place like heaven.

Another entrance to that other world loomed ahead. This portal, beside a curb, was wide and very deep.

While the two waited to cross the street Ceci stood at the edge of a high precipice staring down. Far below her beckoned the other world. But she realized she couldn’t jump into it. Not without shattering the dream and soaking her feet.

Ceci was surprised to see a nearby pigeon on the other side of the portal. The pigeon stood upside down.

Suddenly the pigeon flew up through the silver portal and out into Ceci’s world.

With her eyes Ceci followed the bird up, up, up, up–and there it was: a crystal city–a city of brightly shining buildings newly risen around her.

She looked all about with wonder.

Father’s Paintbrush

~ Richard Schulte ~ 1 Comment

My father’s hobby was painting. You’ve probably never heard of him because he never became known. He never sold anything.

When I was a very young boy I often watched Father standing before his easel on our green lawn, painting ordinary scenes from our backyard. It’s one of the few things from my early childhood I still remember.

He’d paint the old oak tree with its rope swing. Or the hibiscus bush with its flaming red flowers tangled in the dirty white fence. Or that small birdbath at the center of our lawn.

His act of painting had seemed magic to me. I remember how I’d look up to watch him paint a cat on the fence, and then he’d smile down at me and point to the fence. There was the cat!

I’d watch him paint a cloud that looked exactly like a mountain peak in the blue sky. And he’d point to a cloud that looked exactly like a mountain peak in the blue sky!

His paintbrush, to me, was a magician’s wand that created the wonders all around me. His brush created sudden tiny flowers in the grass and shining golden leaves. It materialized an entire bright world. When you’re very young, you believe anything.

His finished paintings were hung in a corner of our garage until the dim garage resembled a dusky art gallery, crammed with oak trees and red flowers and birdbaths and mysterious cats and clouds that resembled many things. When the big garage door opened it seemed as if the sun had just risen: and there in new light were those moments of magic, framed by hanging garden tools!

I remember something else. When my father painted, I’d beg that he summon impossible things. I wanted his magic paintbrush to create an elephant in our backyard. Or a dinosaur. Or a castle. A spaceship popping onto our lawn would be so amazing! But, no, he explained, he didn’t know how to paint those things. It was a big disappointment to my credulous mind that a shiny silver spaceship would never pop into our backyard.

Of course, the day came when I learned paintbrushes aren’t magic. That was the day I ran outside and stopped beside my father and saw that he was painting a strange man. The strange man stood mysteriously on the green lawn, between the oak tree and birdbath. I was confused. I looked from the painting to the lawn and nobody was there. Just grass.

The man painted on the canvas resembled nobody I knew. To me it seemed as though Father had summoned a stranger into our backyard, but the stranger had not come yet. I stared at the painting feeling disappointed. Perhaps the strange person would leap over the dirty white fence at any moment and stand before us.

Obviously, it didn’t happen.

That painting like all the others ended up in our garage, and so did the strange man, standing between the oak tree and bird bath and the hanging garden tools. That my father’s paintbrush wasn’t magic after all saddened me for a day or two, but I soon was laughing. Paintings are nothing but paintings.

As you grow older you discover the truth. You learn to differentiate between fantasy and reality.

You understand there is no magic. And you become embarrassed about silly things you actually believed as a child.

After my father died, my wife and I returned to the old house. We inventoried the clutter in the old bedrooms, the kitchen, dining room and family room. I lifted open the big garage door and there in that new dawn of light were all the paintings exactly as I remembered them: oak tree, small birdbath, cat, clouds.

Gazing at scenes that had been rendered by Father years and years ago, I wondered if anything I faintly remembered had been real. Had that cat really been sitting on our fence or had I merely imagined it? Had there been a cloud of that particular shape in the sky?

My wife, standing beside me, suddenly pointed at one painting just above eye level.

She put her hands to her mouth. “Oh my God!”

It was the painting of the strange adult man standing on our lawn. The man appeared exactly like me.

A Heart That Would Not End

~ Richard Schulte ~ 1 Comment

The faraway sound was familiar, but strange.

“What’s that?” asked the child.

Holding hands with a grown-up, the child circled around the bubbling fountain and arrived at a bench near the Natural History Museum, where a man sat playing a didgeridoo.

Others stood by listening.

A strange, pulsing sound rose from the speaking end of the didgeridoo. It was like the rhythm of the ocean. Like the beating of a heart.

The man’s cheeks swelled as he breathed life through the instrument. The slightly crooked didgeridoo, painted from one end to the other with blue moons and yellow stars, was simply the hollow trunk of a young tree. With his lungs the man produced an ancient music that was resonant, churning, pulsing, surging.

Surging, surging, echoing, echoing.

The child ran a few steps forward, halted within arm’s reach of the magic.

The music never paused or faltered. The man didn’t stop. His eyes were half-closed and turned inward as his head swayed and lungs worked. His cheeks swelled. Beads of sweat made his face gleam. Suddenly the man’s eyes opened wide and he looked directly at the child. An eye winked.

The child laughed and dropped down to the ground to look up into the open end of the didgeridoo. From fallen leaves the child peered up toward the source of the strange music, into the darkness of the singing tree, searching.

There was nothing to see. Only space. A vast, unbounded space more mysterious than the deepest ocean. A place beneath blue moons and yellow stars.

Unfathomable, untouchable, an infinity overflowing with invisible music that swelled like an exultant heart.

And somewhere above it all: a winking eye.

“You’re going to get dirty down there,” said the grown-up. “Come on. It’s lunch time. Aren’t you hungry by now?”

The child jumped up and the two made their way through the sunny park, in step with a beating heart that would not end.

Climbing Higher

~ Richard Schulte ~ 1 Comment

Night.

A dark mountain meadow.

The moon like a bright coin.

A thief moved across the ghostly meadow, melted into black pines.

Roy’s fingers searched the trunk of a tree and discovered a handhold. Blindly he lifted himself onto the lowest branch. Bending his legs, struggling to keep balance, he raised himself into space.

With one greedy hand he reached up again and groped. His fingers closed upon another branch. His muscles lifted.

Secretly he climbed.

A cold mountain wind whirled from the deepest corners of the night, lashing Roy’s upturned face. He fought unseen limbs as gusts swayed the tree. Black needles raked his arms like skeletons caressing.

A higher, more tenuous, more difficult branch.

An icy wind.

A few winking stars shivered through the ever thinning branches. Roy reached up greedily and grabbed hold of another branch, climbed higher, even higher. A careful thief, he climbed higher, higher, into multiplied stars, until the Earth spun a quarter million miles below.

One last branch.

He thrust his head above it.

A bright coin.

Roy collected the moon and put it in his pocket.

A Crown Above All

~ Richard Schulte ~ 5 Comments

Gathering in the park around the splashing fountain. Eating at rusted tables under sun-faded umbrellas. Napping, with head tilted forward, on a park bench. Roaming about flowerbeds. Gossiping, laughing, reading.

As I sat in the shade of a straggly tree, it suddenly appeared to me the splashing fountain was a shining crown. Above every head a crown.

I saw it all in one enchanted moment.

Shining above the gray hair of one gentleman who walked very carefully with a cane.

Shining above the short curls of a girl as she petted a dog.

Shining above a runner, who flashed past the fountain, arms pumping.

Shining above two lovers on scooters, playfully circling around planters of summer chrysanthemums.

Shining above people sitting in disorder, like painted figures on a margin of green grass, talking, resting, thinking.

Above every soul, a waterfall rising into blue basin sky.

Water jetting skyward.

Breaking into atoms.

Shimmering.

Falling.

Gathering.

The Firefly

~ Richard Schulte ~ 8 Comments

Cynthia and Mia loved being outdoors. Late in the evening, after dark, the two young sisters would stroll down to the end of their sleepy cul-de-sac, quietly talking, or singing, listening to the breeze in unseen oak leaves, gazing up at the ever-changing moon. Night was a place for dim lights and deeper feeling. In the darkness they’d steal aboard the slow backyard swing to float among infinite stars. Those beautiful nights were better than any dream.

“There it is again!” said Cynthia.

The firefly had returned. It seemed to show up every night an hour after sunset. The small light zigged and bobbed above the ghostly lawn. It disappeared behind the black shed. Suddenly it appeared right in front of the two sisters, who sat motionless on the swing.

“We should try catching it,” suggested Mia.

“Why?”

“We could bring it inside and use it for a night light.”

“That’s silly.”

“I’m serious!”

“You should never catch a firefly. You’ll be cursed.”

“Says who?”

“I don’t know.”

It remained a very great mystery–why there was always one firefly. Cynthia and Mia watched the small light flit here, there, here again, but always a shade beyond reach. Both young sisters understood that the small insect’s ballet was not arbitrary. Windblown, indecisive–but not without purpose.

The following night the two sisters walked down the cul-de-sac looking for bats. But it was getting too dark, almost a new moon.

After returning home, Mia couldn’t resist her desire. She darted into the kitchen through the screen door. A few minutes later she plunged back into the darkness clutching an empty glass jar. She showed it to Cynthia on their swing. “I’m going to catch the firefly!”

“Why?”

“Because I want my own lightning in a bottle!”

“But a firefly needs to be free. If you trap it you’ll kill it.”

“I punched air holes in the lid.”

“The poor thing will die.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’re silly.”

Mia unscrewed the jar’s lid and sat on the swing with her sister quietly waiting. They could barely see one another. Infinite bright stars whirled above. Somewhere in the night, a lonely cat yowled. An owl hooted. The firefly appeared like magic.

For a long while the two watched the dim light swing through the air like a falling star. With a bound Mia jumped up clutching her jar and raced beside the star.

The firefly darted away.

“Almost got it!” Mia laughed.

Cynthia laughed with her.

Mia chased and veered. A metal lid clapped on glass.

“I got it! I got it!” Mia shouted.

“Quiet! You’ll wake everyone up.”

“But look! I really caught it!

Mia crossed the gray grass and quietly came up to Cynthia with the dark jar in hand. “Look!”

Trapped at the bottom of the jar was a small, indistinct shape. The sisters put their noses to the glass to see better. The captured thing looked like nothing but a plain beetle.

“Are you sure that’s the firefly?” asked Cynthia.

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Well, there. You got your lightning in a bottle. I hope that makes you happy.”

Mia carried the jar into her bedroom. The firefly was in reality just a tiny, rather plain-looking beetle. It crawled awkwardly around the bottom of the confining glass jar, its chemical light off. Mia stared at the hobbling beetle for several minutes, then placed the jar on the corner of her nightstand. She switched off the bedroom light and lay on her back in bed. Her eyes were on the jar. The room was pitch black.

Mia waited. Her eyes focused on the exact spot where the jar should be. She anticipated, hoped, held her breath, waiting, waiting. She wished for a star. She yearned for a rising star. A star of her own. But why would anything happen? It was merely a dull beetle.

Out of the darkness a soft light appeared before her. It grew slowly brighter, slowly brighter, filling the room. The light intensified, enveloped her, blazed and shimmered, lifted her into a dazzling universe of infinite stars.

The alarm clock jolted her from the dream.

Sunlight streamed through the bedroom window. Mia sat up and looked at the jar on the nightstand. The beetle was dead.

Mia stared at the dead thing.

Somehow she stopped her flood of tears when she finally joined Cynthia for breakfast. Mother as usual was drunk and said nothing. The two young sisters headed out into the glaring daylight and trapped themselves in the school bus.

. . .

“I told you you’d kill it,” chided Cynthia.

The two sat motionless on their swing in the darkest of nights. A cold night with no moon and no firefly. They sat outside anyway. Alone in blackness was better than nothing.

“I told you,” insisted Cynthia, “but you wouldn’t listen. Why did you have to catch it? Why did you have to kill it? Now our one and only firefly is gone. There’s nothing left. You murdered it.”

“Stop it! Shut up!”

The two sat motionless on the swing, like twin dead planets in that cold, black night. They didn’t see the bright stars. They didn’t look up.

Cynthia broke the silence. “Now that our one firefly is dead, what’s the point in sitting out here? I’m starting to freeze. Let’s go back inside.”

“I don’t want to go inside,” protested Mia, thinking of their abusive mother.

“But there’s no longer any reason to be here.”

“I don’t care.”

The two sisters had nothing more to say. Each young girl had reached a dead end. Inside and outside, nothing was possible but the suffocating emptiness. There was no place left in the world for either to go.

Two hearts had died.

They sat like gravestones into the night.

A new moon night.

Suddenly, in the emptiness, a ghost light appeared. A light flitted in space before the two sisters.

A firefly zigged and bobbed in front of astonished eyes.

Mia caught her breath. “Look! I don’t believe it! There’s another one!”

The tiny light had appeared from nowhere.

A new firefly bobbed and danced, twirled and weaved, like living magic suddenly risen from a well of utter blackness. Where it came from, neither girl understood. Where on Earth had it come from?

The firefly was a spark from an unseen fire, moving mysteriously, from silence to silence, from heart to heart.

Cynthia turned on the swing to face Mia. “That was terrible what I said to you. I promise I will never hurt you again.”

“I’m sorry, too,” replied Mia. “I’m sorry I was selfish.”

Relief.

Freedom.

The new firefly danced: simply, brightly, joyfully.

In two hearts, new life.

Another Page

~ Richard Schulte ~ 3 Comments

Becky turned another page of her scrapbook.

She peered into a faded photograph.

Flying that kite in the backyard on the green grass. A small yard bright with summer sunshine. The day she found an Indian arrowhead under a stepping stone. Ants in the picnic brownies. That silly dog–his silly name–what was it–Wiggles, and the waving armlike branches of the old crooked oak tree.

That slow rope swing, and cool, satisfying shade beneath wind-rustling leaves. That crazy squirrel. Darting around and around, between the trees. That funny, unstoppable squirrel. The shy small sparrows in the azalea bushes. Dragonflies like green jewels, ethereal pale moths.

Billowing white clouds shaped like sculpted marble, or towering castles high in the sky, shining exactly like heaven at the edges.

A clay pot full of cheerful dahlias. Dandelion fluff that rose like momentary dreams. Sudden hummingbirds. That friendly robin. Diamonds of early morning dew. Gentle waves of tall unmown grass in a soft summer afternoon breeze. The oh-so-sweet smell of green grass.

Her kite, so bright, almost touching the sun.

Becky’s thin fingers turned the pages.

Birthday parties, picnics on the lawn, hide-and-seek, cutting beautiful red roses under the kitchen window, arms twirling wide in a warm summer rain, lying flat on the lush grass, meeting that friend, drinking lemonade from a glass bright with clinking ice, watching for the gopher, painting at a tipsy easel, laughter, idle chatting, repeated bad jokes, learning the guitar, nodding, teasing, stealing kisses, daydreaming, talking with long-vanished best friends on a magic carpet blanket, feeling the so, so soft caress of those passing summers.

She turned through every page. Her scrapbook was just about full.

Becky closed the heavy book and with difficulty set it down on the end table near her wheelchair. Sitting alone, she gazed about the empty, curtained room. It was cold. The room was dead.

Her great-granddaughter flew through the door.

“Hi Great-Ma! What are you doing?”

“Resting. I’m very tired.”

“Why are you tired?”

“Because I’m so very old.”

“Won’t you please come outside with me?” the tiny girl asked. “I’m going to fly my new kite!”

Becky smiled. “Okay.”